Last weekend marked the official end of
the Chinese/Lunar New Year Celebrations ushering in the Year of the
Dragon. I had the chance to meander through the oldest
Chinatown in the United States, in San Francisco. The photos
show the old and the new, commerce and tradition, ending with a
c… Read full post »

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to travel for a
month on a French-themed trip, which included two weeks in Paris.
I've written before about how
I became such a Francophile. Starting this week, I'll
begin a series of posts on my food adventures. … Read full post »

I am daydreaming of those lazy summers of my youth, where bicycle
trips to the local library would reward me with global adventures,
if only in my imagination. I was in 5th grade when I stumbled
upon a tattered paperback copy of Five Fall Into
Adventure, one of the

This gorgeous bunch of flowering garlic chives (jiu
cai in Mandarin) caught my eye in the market this morning. It
brought me back to my childhood, when my mother grew these in
luxurious abundance in our garden. These are commonly used
throughout Asia in various savory dishes. Ga… Read full post »

Yesterday was my daughters' last day of school and today we
celebrated with one of our favorite family activities, a bike ride
down the Embarcadero. We pedaled this storied boulevard from
the ultra-modern Mission Bay campus of the University of
California, San Francisco to… Read full post »

On the US mainland, we may not think
of mangoes as having a season, but for those who live in the
tropics around the world, mango season is something to mark on the
calendar, not to be missed. There is no fruit as seductively
luscious and velvety as… Read full post »

Have you ever sprouted an avocado pit in a cup of water on your
kitchen windowsill? For many of us, this is a first step in
exploring the world of science. It's a fun and satisfying way
to awaken your inner gardener.

What would be your last wish on your final morning in Hawaii?
Catch the sunrise? A last minute dip into the Pacific? Or perhaps
one last exploration of tide pools, looking for crabs, starfish,
and sea turtles?

My mother-in-law wanted a grandchild so badly, she went to
melodramatic lengths to convince me of the urgency to reproduce
immediately. She talked to me about it daily, giving various
reasons for why sooner was better, many of which were reasonable.
But one day, sh

The New York Times’
Michael Ruhlman reviewed the just released Modernist
Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the 6 volume encyclopedia of molecular
gastronomy self-published by Nathan Myhrvold. It was a labor
of love costing somewhere between a reported
$1… Read full post »

I have a travel tic. No, not the plastic bags I carry along
because they come in handy. While I travel to explore the
unfamiliar, the first thing I always do when I arrive is to make
myself at home. Whether it's a room in a hostel,… Read full post »

Houston, Texas's most populated city, also has the third
largest population of Vietnamese Americans in the country,
numbering 64,000 in the most recent Census. My friend Truong
tells me that of those 64,000, 80 are in his immediate
family.

I read an alluring post on Saveur.com that
is just in time for Valentine's Day. It's a slideshow on
foods from around the globe that are thought to be aphrodisiacs.
Some of them are universal: chocolate, oysters, and chillies.
Others, while well known by the ancie/… Read full post »

I couldn't wait to eat the Indian vegetarian special meal I
had requested on the flight that took me to my junior year abroad
in Singapore. This was pre-internet, if you can remember
those days, and I had gotten the "insider" advice to order this
meal from… Read full post »

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year 4709, or 2011 in the
Western calendar. It's the year of the Rabbit, the fourth
sign in the Chinese zodiac. If you were born in 1915, 1927, 1939,
1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, or 2011, this is your year… Read full post »

During football season, I listen with amazement as my
colleague Alison talks about the weekend's game with the guys at
work. "Could you believe that pass? I thought that [Name of Famous
Football Player I Don't Know] really screwed that one up. I
was really expecting… Read full post »

I've bragged before about my hidden talent-- the ability to
understand foreign-accented English, perfected through years
of international
Thanksgiving potlucks. Alas, I do have an Achilles
heel. It's the Scottish brogue. Don't you just love it?
It's musical, cade/… Read full post »

At the age of 21, I was given the task of helping to figure this
out. One of the first jobs I had after college was as a
research assistant at an institute called the World Hunger Program.
This was a think… Read full post »